Engaging the Enemy (23 page)

“I could have killed you.”

“I doubt it.” The Commandant smiled, not the easy, affable smile that the President had enjoyed from Tlibi, but a smile that brought ice to his heart.

He wanted desperately to know how they had found out. Was it Graciela Vatta, that horrible old bag? She was supposed to be dead, or near enough. She'd had her arm shot off; she was in an amputee ward. Surely someone in an amputee ward wasn't able to arrange this, even if she'd had the knowledge…and there was no way she could have the knowledge…“I want to know—” he began.

“I'm sure you have many questions, Mr. President,” the Commandant said. “But I'm not allowed to answer them.”

“This is outrageous,” he said. It was what one said in these situations, but he realized that by itself, with no one listening who cared, it sounded ridiculous, like the bluster it was.

“Except,” the Commandant said slowly, removing from his tunic a small round container, “with this.” He opened the container and set it on the President's desk, within his reach. It looked like—it was—a small pillbox. Inside was one small white pill.

The President felt his insides twist into a hard knot of terror. It could not be. It could not be anything else.

“Such behavior would unfortunately deprive us of the information you have that is relevant to your case,” the Commandant said. “I would be censured severely for not anticipating such an act on your part and preventing it. On the other hand, from the perspective of the person facing intense interrogation with regard to the alleged acts of malfeasance and treason, it might be preferable, though of course it would be seen as an admission of guilt.”

The small white pill seemed to swell, blotting out the future. The President's mouth filled for an instant with sour liquid; he swallowed. “Is it…does it…is it…painless?”

“No,” the Commandant said. “But it is quick.”

His thoughts raced, tiny pictures flickering through his mind. His election, his inauguration, his many speeches, his many conferences, those conversations with party leaders, with prominent business leaders, those confidential chats, those significant glances and one or two words in the right places. He knew—he had made it his business to know—how effectively information could be extracted from prisoners. Those who had been his allies, his friends, would expect him to protect them. Or would they? Were they even now figuring out how to deny their complicity? Were they even now in custody, even now revealing everything to save themselves?

A wailing voice in his mind insisted that he had not been a bad president. He had not done anything everyone else hadn't done, at least not until the threat that could have doomed his government…
We have targeted you and your family, too…
himself. And he could have done nothing else then, no one could. The government needed him, needed his familiar face and voice to reassure them through the crisis. If one family had to suffer unfairly for it—if it was unfair for one family to suffer—then for the good of all…

The Commandant's gaze ripped through that reverie; the man had a drooping eyelid as if he were going to sleep, but even so the intense scrutiny was like a searchlight. The President knew that this man would not listen, and if he listened would not agree with that whining voice.

Now the President's mouth was dry; his voice rasped in his throat. “You think I should…”

“I have no opinion,” the Commandant said. “Or rather, I have an opinion but it would not be appropriate to state it.”

“I—I need time to think—”

The Commandant glanced at the clock on the wall; the left corner of his mouth twitched. “Do you? That might be unfortunate.”

“You could have said it was painless!” That came out in an aggrieved whine that sounded childish even to him.

The Commandant shook his head. “I don't lie,” he said, without even a hint of emphasis on the pronoun. Other men had said that, and other men had been lying when they said it. The President had long experience of liars great and small. But this time, with this man, habitual honesty was as obvious as habitual dishonesty was in others. It was not a boast. It was not an attempt to convince. It was a simple fact: he did not lie.

Damn the man. Damn the arrogant, self-righteous, stiff-necked, ramrod-up-the-rear priggishness of him. Why couldn't the Commandant at least have the grace to be crudely triumphant, amused, something—anything—despicable that he himself could fix on, could feel superior to?

The President felt the sting of tears and closed his eyes. He would not cry in front of this man. He would not beg for mercy where no mercy existed. His eyes dried, burned with the effort not to cry. His hands twitched against each other, under the desk, but he was sure the Commandant knew that even if he could not see it.

“My wife—” he said, pleased that his voice was steady. “She is certainly not involved in any of the alleged incidents.”

The Commandant nodded. “No one, Mr. President, suspects your wife of anything.”

“And I categorically deny that I myself have done anything illegal or…or improper.”

“I understand, Mr. President.”

“Whatever evidence you or the Council think they have seen, it is all faked, a malicious plot against me.”

“I understand, Mr. President.” A pause. “Time is passing, Mr. President.”

Somewhere outside his office, men were searching through files and closets, questioning clerks and secretaries, housekeepers and cooks. The quick imagination that had made him so effective a politician, so able to see others' viewpoints and how to circumvent them, what means would work with which opponent, now provided a stream of images: employees backed into corners of an office, eyes wide, muttering to each other, families disturbed at breakfast, on vacations, children crying, spouses indignant and frightened, the incredible mess left behind any official search.

The pill in its box seemed to pulsate in time with these images, alluring and terrifying all at once. He had always considered himself a brave man: what would a brave man do? Face the coming investigations, the inevitable trial? Drag his wife and his relatives and friends through the muck? End his life with a hood over his head so the official witnesses at the execution didn't even have to see his face, as the glass wall protected them from the unseemly smells of sudden death? Or die now, quickly if not painlessly, and hope that his death would take much of the ardor from the investigations? That they would be content with his death?

He wanted to ask how much it hurt, how bad was the pain, but even in the roil of emotions, he knew that the Commandant could not answer that question. If it was really that—really death, in that small compass—no one had lived to say how bad it was. Or how quick.

He had never considered himself indecisive. He had always been firm in his opinions, in his positions, unswayed by anything but the practicalities of his office. Yet now he was wavering, hating himself for that wavering.

Even through the closed door, he heard a noise in the passage outside.

In a flash, without really thinking, he grabbed the pillbox, shook the pill into his hand, then into his mouth. The pill dissolved, a bitter taste, and a second later pain wrenched his body, outlining his bones in white fire.

“Good for you,” the Commandant said, past the pain and the roaring in his ears. For an instant, he was grateful for that small commendation. Then sound and pain met, went beyond bearing, and he lost himself in that chaos.

After setting up the new ship account, Ky asked about access to the other Vatta accounts.

“Of course,” the account rep said. “You have been identified as an authorized person, captain of a Vatta ship. What did you want?”

“I want to transfer a small sum to the ship account, to be transferred back when the West Cascadia Rehab Centre funds come in and clear. We need to pay docking fees, air fees, that kind of thing.”

“You'll need about a thousand, then,” she said. “Here are the balances of the various Vatta accounts. There's the general corporate account, and each ship has its own—”

“I'll transfer from the general,” Ky said. “What's your clearing time on transfers from the planet?”

“For an entity like the rehab center, four hours. We have to run a verifying query to their branch, that's all.”

Ky mentally added up the charges so far. “You're right, a thousand should do it.” That transfer took only seconds. Ky then authorized payment of the outstanding charges, which came to 978 credits, and headed back to the ship with a freshly programmed leader-tag. She was able to anticipate most of its chirpy directions, and dumped it happily in the bin outside the dock entrance.

The status display outside the ship now showed green: all charges paid. No local police were visible, as they had been when she left. A very practical way, she thought, to ensure that no one pulled out leaving unpaid bills behind. The little blue bar at the bottom of the display puzzled her at first, but when she touched it, the text explanation came up. 48
HOUR CREDIT LIMIT APPROVED
. So she wouldn't have to transfer again even if the rehab center's funds were delayed…good.

Back inside the ship, Toby met her before she got to the bridge. For once, the dog was not at his heels. “You're not going to make me sell Rascal, are you?”

“What? Of course not, what gave you that idea?”

“There've been inquiries coming in. It's all the cargo they're interested in, and they're offering a lot of money…and he's caused so much trouble…” Toby looked near tears.

Ky put a hand on his shoulder. “Toby, listen. Rascal is not cargo. He's crew. Granted, he's a noisy, dirty, smelly, mischievous little terror, but he's
our
dog, officially, and
your
dog in reality.”

“It's a whole lot of money,” Toby said, doubt still clear in his voice. “Martin said you might need it.”

“So just how much is a whole lot of money?” Ky asked.

“Er…um…thirty-seven thousand.”

“For a dog?” That seemed impossible. What were dogs good for, other than to make messes and cheer up orphans?

“Yes. And Martin thinks they'll go higher…we haven't even advertised.”

“Well, I wouldn't sell
you
for thirty-seven thousand, or thirty-seven million,” Ky said. “And I'm not selling your dog.” The numbers danced in her head anyway. “But if you weren't offended at the idea, maybe we could market his sperm.”

“You trust them?”

“No. But if we hired a vet, I'm sure there's some way to do it on this ship, something that wouldn't harm him permanently but could get your trading nest egg started.” And pay for his education, if it turned out his parents were among the dead.

“He's only a puppy—”

“He's grown a lot since Lastway, Toby, and so have you. Let's see…if dogs are so scarce and valuable here, they may not have a canine vet on the station, but there's bound to be one onplanet who has expertise in artificial insemination. Let's see.”

The station directory listed only two vets, both certified for “livestock import/export health certification and quarantine procedures.” One listed the species for which he was certified, including some Ky had never heard of, but not dogs. The other's ad said, “Practice limited to health certification of large animal (hoofed) livestock.”

Cascadia's directory included only five “canine specialists,” and one of those listed “reproductive services.” Ky checked the time zones against the listed office hours. Seven hours until they opened. She glanced at Toby. “So where did you hide him?”

He flushed. “In…a crate behind some stuff in the gym.”

“Don't you think you ought to let him out?”

“Yes. I just worried—”

“Well, don't. You're not going to lose your dog. Go on now, let him out before he destroys the crate.” She just managed not to add her usual
and keep him out of trouble.
Toby didn't need to hear that at the moment.

“Yes'm.” Toby took off at a jog, neatly avoiding Rafe, who was just coming onto the bridge.

“A boy and his dog,” Rafe said, coming in as Toby left. “I suppose you told him you weren't going to sell Rascal?”

“Yes,” Ky said. “Though we're looking at vet services. If they're that eager for a dog, I'm thinking frozen sperm might be worth something.”

“Mercenary lot, you Vattas,” Rafe said, but without much sting to it. “I noticed that our dock-watcher disappeared. I suppose that means the transfer came through?”

“It hadn't when I was at the bank, but I moved some funds from another Vatta account to clear our accounts onstation.”

Her skullphone bleeped. Ky motioned Rafe back and answered it.

“That transfer you were expecting just came through from the rehab center.” A visual display gave her the number and name of the caller, though she had already recognized the voice as the person she'd spoken to at Crown & Spears. “We should get confirmation by the close of business, this shift; do you want us to transfer the thousand back to the Vatta corporate fund when we do?”

Ky queried her implant about the Moscoe Confederation's history with Vatta Transport. Under its heading, her father had noted “…requires steady, mature captains with uncommon interpersonal skills; these people are ferociously courteous but occasionally capricious. Under no circumstances should ship crews reveal the presence of small pets, especially dogs. There is a pervasive belief in this society that their dogs were stolen from them by merchant ships, and they will insist that any dog is one of those stolen, or the descendant of same. They have few dogs, owing to the same problems as many terraformed worlds where the native wildlife is highly toxic to dogs.”

Ky could almost hear her father's voice in those familiar cadences. Just so he had explained things to her or thought aloud, filling in each corner, finishing off each idea precisely. Grief swept over her. She could not believe she would never see him again; that if she returned to Slotter Key, he would not be there to greet her. She knew—she believed what Stella had said—but it seemed a fantasy, unreal.

She wanted to go home. She had never been really homesick at school or the Academy or even on the first voyage. The memories had all been comforting, not distressing. Now she felt the pull of Slotter Key, the familiar sights and smells, the familiar stars in the familiar night sky, the particular green of the tik plantations, the feel of the rain on her face, the cool tiles of the hall under her bare feet, the colors of the flowers. It did not seem possible that she would never walk that hall again, never throw herself down on that bed, never see again any of the childhood keepsakes in that closet, never see or hear…she let herself think of that for a moment…her father, her mother, her brothers. The visuals stored in her father's implant showed the moment of destruction, what her father saw, but not what came after…was anything left at all?

She blinked back the tears and made herself concentrate on the current situation. So she shouldn't have let the locals know they had a dog…how bad was this going to get? Should she warn Toby? Finding a good place to hide the dog seemed prudent, as did making sure they were full up with supplies in case they needed to button the ship and leave in a hurry. And she could check local statutes relating to dogs on their legal database.

Stella Vatta Constantin listened to the litany of complaints about her cousin Ky's behavior and wondered what Ky thought she was doing. Her aims had seemed straightforward enough back on Lastway: survive attacks, find and join up with other Vatta survivors, try to reorganize Vatta as a commercial entity. Hiring the mercenaries to protect them had made sense in those terms; forming a convoy to offset the cost of hiring the mercenaries made sense as well. But ever since the Osman affair, as Stella thought of it, Ky's behavior had changed, and Stella wasn't sure Ky still put Vatta—the family and the business—first.

Stella had fought with her own memories of the stubborn, bossy child Ky had been, trying to understand the person Ky had become in those years they hadn't met. The trim, compact, decisive young captain on the dock at Lastway had clearly changed, matured. Whether that was the influence of Spaceforce Academy or something else, Stella didn't know, but she'd begun to like and trust that Ky and believe that Grace was right in saying that Ky should lead the family through this crisis. She'd appreciated that Ky was quite clearly going through the same struggle to see Stella as she was now, not as that-idiot-Stella.

Now she wasn't so sure. Why had Ky refused to accept her father's implant until a moment of crisis, the most dangerous time to attempt an implant change? Why hadn't she accepted the mercenaries' offer of assistance if she hadn't trusted Rafe? Why hadn't she listened to the mercenaries' advice to get out of the system rather than make contact with the suspiciously convenient “Vatta” ship that turned out to be Osman? Ky had risked so much—risked all of them, as well as herself. The boy Toby, who should have been protected first and last. She'd actually talked to Toby about suicide, something Stella considered horrible, given Toby's past experience.

And as for the battle itself…she had struggled not to let Ky see how shocked and alarmed she'd been by the way Ky conducted it—and herself. That feral grin of triumph, so different from the sick guilt Stella felt the times she'd killed…Stella had the feeling, dread mixed with nausea, that Ky had enjoyed killing Osman, that she felt no remorse at all.

She'd been relieved that Ky left her behind on
Gary Tobai,
and at the same time appalled. How could Ky leave a complete novice in command of a ship, even with the experienced senior crew she'd inherited? For that matter, how could Ky think of trying to run a damaged ship—about which she knew nothing—with just a skeleton crew?

Ky's decision to leave her in charge at Garth-Lindheimer rather than submit to adjudication of Ky's claim to Osman's ship had come as a shock as well. Refusing adjudication bordered on lawlessness. That wasn't like Ky; she'd always been the most stubbornly legalistic child.

And now she was faced with more evidence that Ky wasn't what she'd seemed at Lastway, that she might be a young Osman: brilliant but erratic, a charismatic leader with overweening ambition, without a conscience. A killer.